


interlude: sickness, misery and smoke

by chemicalflashes



Series: Instrumentality + What Now? [4]
Category: Neon Genesis Evangelion
Genre: Addictions, Character Study, F/M, Fanart, Mental Illness, Post-Canon, Post-Third Impact, Trauma, animated gif, not really shipping centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-26
Updated: 2019-05-26
Packaged: 2020-03-17 23:13:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18974371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chemicalflashes/pseuds/chemicalflashes
Summary: All she can do is look at this pathetic boy lying down. All she can do is watch him, a person she doesn't like but doesn't really hate either.In which Shinji Ikari is sick and Asuka Langley Soryu observes him. Sequel to 'i never asked you what's wrong'.





	interlude: sickness, misery and smoke

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is just an interlude, mainly focusing on Asuka. I am surprised how fast I was able to write it.

**Some days ago.**

They returned from Instrumentality yesterday and Asuka and him are looking for supplies in separate corners of a convenience store now. There is no light and he has to find everything by touch alone. Suddenly his fingers find small cuboidal packages lying in a row. He knows what those are. Shinji quietly shoves five of them in his trousers. It won't hurt to try. He has seen the joys of addictions in Misato, after all.

Nothing that looked disgusting before is disgusting now. Not after everything he has seen and done...

...and when Shinji sees the smoke float later that night, he feels numb to the pain.

 

* * *

 

* * *

 

**Present.**

There is a sick boy at the end of the world and a frustrated girl sits beside him. He continues to burn while she does everything she can: putting a wet rag to his head, making hot soups, administering paracetamol and rubbing his arms. But it doesn't go away.

Asuka doesn't know what illnesses eat at him and maybe this thing isn't physical at all.

She had found him half mad yesterday after he had set a place on fire. He never told her that he did it, of course, but she knows anyway; she can fathom a guess. She looks at him lying on the mattress in their tent and the cold wind howls outside. She doesn't want to be here...she had told him that they should move away from the beach, away from those petrified Evas and Lilith's eery head on the horizon but he just never did. He believes humanity to be gone forever and yet he waits right on the beach where they all disappeared.

And now Shinji's sick and not in a proper bed and it frustrates her. She has not cared for someone in a long while, certainly never tended to a sick person and her inability to do anything is getting to her. All she can do is look at this pathetic boy lying down on the thin mattress through which one can feel the sand shifting underneath with one's movements. All she can do is watch him, a person she doesn't like but doesn't really hate either.

The girl catches hold of his wrist and she finds that his pulse is rapid, too rapid. He's muttering something. He is always muttering something, answering the people in his head. Sometimes she wonders if he even knows she is here. She remembers the day she had come back — she had dreamt about it only yesterday. She had been floating in the red sea that lies outside and he had caught her and then dragged her ashore. When he had choked her sometime later, his hands been cold and clammy and shaking like dry autumnal leaves that are about to fall off. His eyes had been lifeless.

His hands are still shaking but now they are very hot. She catches a few words from his whispering lips.

"...forgive me, Misato."

She closes her eyes for a brief moment and blinks them back open. What is she supposed to do with this boy? She cannot tell him anything without him blaming himself to an extreme (she knows that from yesterday when she showed him her scars), she cannot berate him for his past actions and she cannot even look him after, it seems. She had hoped he would begin to talk more and be himself again, so to speak, but now he is ill and she doesn't know if he will even survive.

An image of him deathly pale and immobile flashes unbidden in her mind and she stifles a sob. She has not cared for anyone in a long time, never comforted a single soul and rarely thought of other people's needs but he is the only person she can see around for miles and miles and the thought of him dying makes her tear up.

She remembers his words from yesterday evening when she had found him sitting motionless on the pavement. He had been crying and screaming about how he was pathetic and how he had wronged her and brought about the end of the world. Which wasn't exactly...wrong but the way he had said those things told her that he was sorry and far too deep into guilt.

It is eating at him and now he is burning up. At one time, she would have been joyed to see him like this but now she just feels an emptiness she cannot explain. She recalls when she had to undergo synchronisation training with him, he had been quiet, but at least he could respond to her jabs in kind. Misato had always been biased and she had used to talk frequently about the boy with him. She had told her about him when he had first come to Tokyo-3 and how he said nothing except 'Yes' and had no friends. She had said he had changed a little bit for the better.

At that time, Asuka had laughed off her claims, saying that Shinji was still pathetic and that she was mistaken.

But now...now she remembers her guardian's words and looks at Shinji and his quiet mouth and closed eyes and she knows that Misato had been right. Whatever good that had been done, has now gone up in smoke with his burning. He is fragile and ashen, and Asuka isn't any better herself, with her crying and shivering and flashbacks to the past, but at least she isn't hearing voices and answering them

Shinji is pale and his breathing is barely audible over the sound of the waves. He fell silent a few moments ago and she doesn't know whether he will sleep for real now or wake up from his haze. Drops of water and sweat run down his head. She removes the wet rag and places a new one on his forehead. His lips are parted slightly and she thinks he is parched.

Before the Third Impact, she would have never done this. Yes, she had visited him in the hospital after the 12th angel had eaten his Eva, but that had been about it. He had giggled back then, on seeing her frowning face outside his room and she never told him that she had waited for him to wake up. He had visited her too...she knows. He had screamed about that incident yesterday, too and about her being aware. He was right, she hadn't exactly been comatose, just paralysed and unable to make herself move or speak, but her senses had been working.

Asuka looks down at his still body clad in a shirt whose first three buttons are left open and she cannot help but remember his voice and cries for help back in the hospital. She can see the beginnings of dark and pink bruised skin on his chest. Scars like hers. A marked body. Oh, how the situation is an exact reverse of that incident from what seems like a lifetime ago. She isn't going to do what he did, of course. She is sad, not out of her mind (hopefully).

"Asuka…"

It breaks her out of her reverie. Shinji's eyes are open and he is looking at her. He looks in pain. She just waits for him to say something else.

"Can you kill me?"

What the fuck?

"Ikari, you really are an idiot."

He doesn't say anything, choosing to not look at her. She sighs. "Can you sit up?" she asks shortly, changing the subject entirely.

Instead of replying he turns to his side and gets up, catching hold of the wet rag on his forehead in the process. Great.

"T-thanks…" he says. "For bearing with me. I… I am sorry for everything."

"Saying sorry won't change things."

He flinches ever so slightly and looks away. "I know."

"But you can be a better person now," she tells him. "I am trying too, aren't I?"

He says nothing and for a moment, she wants to slap him for not acknowledging her words but then he turns back to look at her and smiles. _Smiles._ She hasn't seen him smiling in such a long time and she actually feels glad. It means there is hope for him yet.

"You have always been a better person than me, Asuka," he notes quietly.

"We are all fucked up," she states simply and moves up towards the tent's entrance to look outside. "Anyway," she says with half of her body still leaning out of the tent, "do you want to get up and go outside? It might do you good." Her voice sounds a little distant.

"Okay."

 

* * *

 

Asuka follows Shinji as he walks slow and tentative steps on the beach and she isn't surprised when he takes out a cigarette from his trouser's pocket and a lighter from the other. At this point, nothing surprises her. 'So that's how he probably started the fire yesterday?' is all that she can wonder. 'Nice to have an answer for once.'

The boy looks at the white stick of tobacco in his left hand. He then watches the silver lighter in his right hand and clicks it on. A steady flame splutters to life. He is fascinated. He has smoked a few times ever since he came back, but never in front of Asuka. But he cannot care at the moment; he is already tainted in her view and his own vision of him and smoking is what tainted people do.

The voices are loud over the rushing waves of the sea but soon they'll be gone. Lilith and her creepy smile lie in the distance. Asuka is some metres behind him. She hasn't said anything till now and that is nice.

He lights the cigarette. Smoke curls and unfurls in the air. Numbness settles in his mind. Nothing can hurt him now.

Asuka sits on the shore and watches the boy corrode.

 

**Author's Note:**

> And that's it, for a while, I guess. See you in the next story.


End file.
